GREY MUTTER lance fredericks Flattening out the sheets

IREMEMBER when I was still at school, having to make my bed each morning – what a drag, what a nuisance, what an inconvenience!

The only thing I hated more than making my bed every morning was getting into an unmade bed at night.

In summer I could get away with just sliding out of bed and straightening the sheets and the one cover, even though we were told that we had to shake out our bedding each morning.

But in winter – Kimberley’s winter – trying to straighten out my 250 blankets, 40 comforters and 22 eiderdowns just didn’t work.

We were told that dust mites get into the bedding and can set off one’s allergies; just like someone once told me that it’s a good idea to iron one’s underwear to kill bacteria and prevent yeast infections.

So I tried ironing my underwear once, and I learned a valuable lesson … remove them first!

But I digress, so back to my bed … To strip a bed of all those covers and then place them back neatly and tuck them in properly (I am very particular about my tucking) seemed to take forever. But nothing could beat the joy of slipping into a well-made bed at night.

The idiom is true even at its surface level: You actually make the bed you lie in.

Also, another benefit of properly making one’s bed is that shaking out blankeys can give one a pretty decent aerobic workout.

This is one of a number of reasons I feel sorry for many of our senior citizens. It must be frustrating not to be able to give their bedding a decent morning shake due to their frailty.

Firstly they are missing out on a morning workout, and secondly their beds, I imagine, could get pretty musty.

Some elderly people are fortunate enough to have someone look after them, but for others, as we’ve been seeing in this newspaper over the past week or so, it can be a daily struggle.

I was encouraged to learn that the Department of Social Development has made a commitment to establish a task team to look at issues of concern at the Resthaven Old Age Home.

It delighted me to read that every resident at the centre would be assessed by a full complement of health professionals to ensure proper medical care and, if necessary, determine if alternative care is needed for affected residents.

I am over the moon that an overall assessment of the facility is being done for revamping, because from the street it’s been looking pretty dismal recently.

But though the involvement of the MEC and the department and the task team is appreciated, we have to admit to our shame as a society that this should never have been their concern.

The mere fact that such a high delegation has had to step into this issue points to the fact that we, as a society, have failed the aged.

It’s good news that Resthaven is being looked at as a facility, but even if the old folk at the Galeshewe Association for the Care of the

Aged, Belgrave Lodge, Ons Huis and Acacia Park are being properly looked after inside the facilities, we have to ask: have they been discarded by their families and society?

Did you notice what I wrote earlier? I said that I have driven past Resthaven on numerous occasions and noticed how shabby it’s been looking. That’s the same as saying that I noticed that my bed was unmade, but decided to do nothing about it.

One day, think about it, we will probably end up in one of these retirement homes; and what we experience then as old people may for the most part be determined by how we now, in our relative youth, shape our society’s perception of how the aged should be cared for.

We are actually making the bed we will one day lie in.